


Lay Us Down

by stardustedknuckles



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Canon Timeline, Comfort, Established Relationship, F/F, Non-Sexual Kink, Nudity, Soft bondage, it's warm fuzzies with leather and trust porn, just spiritually, nothing physically explicit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:48:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28206339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardustedknuckles/pseuds/stardustedknuckles
Summary: When Beau has trouble settling down, she trusts Yasha to help her reel herself back in.
Relationships: Beauregard Lionett/Yasha
Comments: 9
Kudos: 121





	Lay Us Down

**Author's Note:**

> I just wanted comfort tonight. If you can't summon your own...

"Come lie down with me."

Beau had been moving restlessly since they returned to the tower, first downstairs with her knee going nonstop at the dinner table, then unable to focus on her notes for the half hour or so Yasha had sat quietly with her in the library. Now she was pacing after the bath they had taken, and Yasha had a fairly clear idea of what might be going on.

Beau looked over her shoulder at Yasha and seemed to realize for the first time that she'd been worrying her thumbnail with her teeth. She tucked it into her fist and watched Yasha for a moment without really seeing her.

If she were a little more vain, Yasha might feel a bit put out, but the fact of Beau's relative inability to account for her own bare body plus Yasha's was simply an indicator for Yasha of how hard she must be struggling to stay present.

Yasha pulled the sheets back on Beau's bed and patted the empty space encouragingly. "We don't have to do anything," she said. "Just come here and let me hold you."

It still thrilled her to be able to say those words, even more that she was the right person to help when Beau got this way. Beau was someone who felt a lot of things at a much greater volume than most people, and sometimes they got too loud for her to easily sift through. Fighting and sex helped, and meditation too sometimes, but recently they had figured out that punching and fucking weren't the only ways to get her back in her skin - and Yasha loved the excuse to be gently doting in a way that Beau was usually too tightly wound to let herself enjoy.

Beau hesitated now as she looked from Yasha's hand on the bed to her face and asked in a small voice, "Will you tie me?"

Yasha hadn't dared hope for this, and she did her best to hide how her heart leapt at the question. "Of course." She smiled softly and was gratified even by the reflexive quirk she got in response. "Do you want to be blindfolded too?"

Beau considered, then nodded. "Yeah. I think I do."

Yasha sat up on the edge of the bed and reached out a hand, and Beau's shoulders relaxed incrementally as she took the few steps forward to grasp it and let Yasha draw her down to sit in her lap with her back against Yasha's chest. There was a single drawer in the night stand next to the bed, and Yasha used one hand to rummage through it while she wrapped the other beneath Beau's ribs to hold her close.

The rings on the leather cuffs and collar clinked softly as Yasha pulled them out and lay them beside her on the sheets, in contrast to the two soft, silky lengths of fabric that unpoured like a solid shadow to join them.

Yasha turned back to Beau and gently grasped one of her wrists to draw it out and away from her body. She folded the first of the cuffs around it, keeping her movements slow and deliberate to let the smooth texture wrap around Beau's skin by degrees and draw out the gathering sensation of being held. She turned Beau's arm upside down to fasten the straps and pressed a kiss to her palm before returning her wrist to reach for the other.

"Tied?" she asked. Beau nodded, eyes fixed on Yasha's fingers and already looking looser in her bones. Yasha kissed her temple and reached for one of the strips of black fabric. Beau's gaze reeled in from the middle distance with every hushed ghost of the fabric over and under the silver rings, until the metal was completely muffled and Beau securely bound. She took both of her wrists in a soft grip and tugged them apart to demonstrate the lack of give and was rewarded by the reflexive clench of Beau's thighs around hers. One step closer.

Yasha traced a soft finger over Beau's dark knuckles, taking in the split of them under her own callouses and the way they seemed to complement each other. She dimly registered the growing damp heat coming from between Beau's legs, making the slightest slick noise when she moved. That usually happened when they did this, Beau's body reacting on autopilot to stimulus she was only beginning to process. Yasha began to speak quietly, soft praises and comments that Beau didn't need to comprehend to be drawn by. She said some of them in celestial as she reached for the collar, knowing the translation of them would pour like water over Beau's mind.

Yasha gloried in the way Beau's eyelids fluttered shut at the first cool slide of the leather on her throat, the slow inhale as she lifted Beau's drying hair and brought the buckle around to secure the collar just tight enough to be a constant, grounding constraint. She slipped a finger beneath it at the base of Beau's pulse and murmured, "Yes?"

Beau's eyes stayed closed, her breathing deep as she nodded. Yasha applied the slightest pressure on the ring that dangled from the front, then just a little more. Beau shivered then, swallowing hard. "That's really good," she whispered.

Offering comment meant that Beau was already starting to settle, able to start taking stock of her body and how it felt.

"I'm going to blindfold you now," Yasha said, and Beau's eyes opened as she knew they would. She liked to be watching Yasha when her sight disappeared, appreciated the extent of the feeling of deprivation and Yasha's eyes being the last thing she saw. She had told her as much, back in the beginning when they were just figuring out this routine. She'd been so much more easily embarrassed then, battling the persistent shame that came from years of want as weakness, from hiding need to protect herself.

Today she just leaned back when the knot was finished and rested her head on Yasha's collarbone, breathing deeply as the pressure of her bonds coaxed some essential part of her down from her head and back into her skin.

Yasha slid the hand wrapped below Beau's ribs down to her hipbone before dragging her fingers across to the other - the signal that she was about to move them. She nudged Beau's leg over to the inside of hers and gathered her under the knees to lift her and pull them both up fully onto the bed.

Beau made a soft sound of pleasure when Yasha deposited her gently onto the empty space next to her, and from there Yasha was able to pull the cord to dim the lights and tug the sheets up over their waists in almost the same movement.

Beau's stomach was cool under Yasha's palm as she tugged her back against her chest and let her chin rest on the crown of Beau's head, and for a long time they simply lay still as Yasha drifted her fingers up and down Beau's hip in a gentle sweeping motion under the sheet. Her thoughts unspooled, and this was a double-sided gift Beau allowed her to give because there was no room for Yasha to dwell on anything either, not like this. This was just for them, a kind of cocoon in time where the only world they knew was there in the places their bodies touched.

Beau would finish coming back to herself soon, and then she would turn to Yasha to present her bonds for the undoing before either sleeping or quietly requesting an unhurried fuck - a kind of punctuation.

But for now she lay on her side under Yasha's soft gaze, breathing slow and deep and giving Yasha all of this time to drink in the gift of being chosen as the quiet guard and witness to this deep vein of vulnerability Beau had spent her lifetime fighting viciously to keep hidden. Every taut scar and relaxed muscle was precious, every dip and swell of the body that she sometimes needed this help to hold onto.

These quiet moments gleamed in Yasha's memory, tiny diamonds she gathered and held as close as Beau's heat against her. Yasha smiled to herself and kept stroking Beau softly, waiting for her to come back and for whatever their next moment would entail.


End file.
